Saturday, August 05, 2006

A courageous voice of reason and sanity from Israel!

I know and always said that a goodness is present in the soul of men what ever their natinal or ethnic differences.

I read this article in the Internet, I found it deserve to be read by other as it throw some light on the darkness of the mind of some people.

Morality is not on our side

By Ze'ev Maoz

There's practically a holy consensus right now that the war in theNorth is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truthmust be said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selectivememory, an introverted worldview, and double standards.

This war is not a just war. Israel is using excessive force withoutdistinguishing between civilian population and enemy, whose solepurpose is extortion. That is not to say that morality and justice areon Hezbollah's side. Most certainly not. But the fact that Hezbollah"started it" when it kidnapped soldiers from across an internationalborder does not even begin to tilt the scales of justice toward ourside.

Let's start with a few facts. We invaded a sovereign state, andoccupied its capital in 1982. In the process of this occupation, wedropped several tons of bombs from the air, ground and sea, whilewounding and killing thousands of civilians. Approximately 14,000civilians were killed between June and September of 1982, according toa conservative estimate. The majority of these civilians had nothingto do with the PLO, which provided the official pretext for the war.

In Operations Accountability and Grapes of Wrath, we caused the massflight of about 500,000 refugees from southern Lebanon on eachoccasion. There are no exact data on the number of casualties in theseoperations, but one can recall that in Operation Grapes of Wrath, webombed a shelter in the village of Kafr Kana which killed 103civilians. The bombing may have been accidental, but that did not makethe operation any more moral.

On July 28, 1989, we kidnapped Sheikh Obeid, and on May 12, 1994, wekidnapped Mustafa Dirani, who had captured Ron Arad. Israel held thesetwo people and another 20-odd Lebanese detainees without trial, as"negotiating chips." That which is permissible to us is, of course,forbidden to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah crossed a border that is recognized by the internationalcommunity. That is true. What we are forgetting is that ever since ourwithdrawal from Lebanon, the Israel Air Force has conductedphoto-surveillance sorties on a daily basis in Lebanese airspace.While these flights caused no casualties, border violations are borderviolations. Here too, morality is not on our side.

So much for the history of morality. Now, let's consider currentaffairs. What exactly is the difference between launching Katyushasinto civilian population centers in Israel and the Israel Air Forcebombing population centers in south Beirut, Tyre, Sidon and Tripoli?The IDF has fired thousands of shells into south Lebanon villages,alleging that Hezbollah men are concealed among the civilianpopulation. Approximately 25 Israeli civilians have been killed as aresult of Katyusha missiles to date. The number of dead in Lebanon,the vast majority comprised of civilians who have nothing to do withHezbollah, is more than 300.

Worse yet, bombing infrastructure targets such as power stations,bridges and other civil facilities turns the entire Lebanese civilianpopulation into a victim and hostage, even if we are not physicallyharming civilians. The use of bombings to achieve a diplomatic goal -namely, coercing the Lebanese government into implementing UN SecurityCouncil Resolution 1559 - is an attempt at political blackmail, and noless than the kidnapping of IDF soldiers by Hezbollah is the aim ofbringing about a prisoner exchange.

There is a propaganda aspect to this war, and it involves acompetition as to who is more miserable. Each side tries to persuadethe world that it is more miserable. As in every propaganda campaign,the use of information is selective, distorted and self-righteous. Ifwe want to base our information (or shall we call it propaganda?)policy on the assumption that the international environment is goingto buy the dubious merchandise that we are selling, be it out ofignorance or hypocrisy, then fine. But in terms of our own nationalsoul searching, we owe ourselves to confront the bitter truth - maybewe will win this conflict on the military field, maybe we will makesome diplomatic gains, but on the moral plane, we have no advantage,and we have no special status.

The writer is a professor of political science at Tel Aviv university.

6 comments:

Dr. TT, good to see you posting again. I have to admit I was very supportive of Israel's initial strikes against Hezbollah - they had after all crossed the international border, killed Israeli soldiers and kidnapped 2. That seems to me a declaration of war.

But the longer this has gone on, it seems obvious to me that Hezbollah could care less how many of their fellow Lebanonese die. I don't think this was about "trading prisoners" as Hezbollah says but about what Hezbollah's Masters (i.e. Iran) wants. Why so many Arabs are willing to die to satisfy the whims of Persian Shia mullahs I don't know. Having said all that I think Israel has fallen into Hezbollah's trap. The more innocent Lebabonese who die, the more Lebanon is destroyed, the worse it gets for Israel both internationally and regionally and it also seems like Israel has no actual plan of war - just bomb everything and hope you kill some Hezbollah. That doesn't make sense.

Israel should stop right now, maybe invite the Lebanonese PM to Israel for peace talks, get some of the more powerful nations (US, UK, France) and some of the Arab nations at peace with Israel (Jordan, Egypt) and have a summit - thus isolating Hezbollah and Iran. But it seems instead they just think bombing is going to work - all that leads to is more war and more people looking for revenge.

On another note, HNK wrote you were pulled over by a US convoy with your oldest daughter and baby grandson in the car. I know it doesn't do any good - but as an American I'm sorry for that - a distinguished man of dignity (which comes through the Internet) shouldn't have to face something like that. It doesn't make any sense either - a man of your age with a young woman and baby travelling with him is exactly the OPPOSITE of the kind of suicide bombers/criminals who should be stopped.

"HNK wrote you were pulled over by a US convoy with your oldest daughter and baby grandson in the car."

Thank you for your feeling. I was with my daughter and little Aya, my beautiful grand daughter. The American kept me in the sun with my hands up for about 90 min. for no obvious reason.I didn't mention that in my blog because these actionsd became every day experiences in our daily life.